A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
